


Casting stones

by apathyinreverie



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Tony Stark, Civil War Team Iron Man, Fix-It, Gen, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-01-30 12:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apathyinreverie/pseuds/apathyinreverie
Summary: "I am…inevitable.""And I am..." There is a wry twist to Tony's lips. Somehow, he always knew it was going to come down to this. From the moment he first announced to the press that he himself was Iron Man, Tony knew that it was always going to end in some version of this. But there is still utter conviction in his voice as he continues emphatically, "Iron Man."He snaps his fingers.And it changes the very fabric of the universe.(A time travel fix-it. Just because.)
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Jarvis (Iron Man movies) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark
Comments: 937
Kudos: 3269
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts, Fix it by time travel, Lov(stark-peter), tony stark & soul travel





	1. Chapter 1

_Thanos looks at him, smugly, victoriously._

_"I am… inevitable." _

_The alien snaps his fingers. _ _Nothing happens._

_Confusion spreads over Thanos' face. Quickly followed by realization. Then, alarm as he once more glances at Tony._

_"And I... am," a wry twist of Tony's lips, but utter conviction in his voice as he continues, "_Iron Man._"_

_Somehow, he knew it was always going to come down to this. From the moment he first announced to the press that he himself was Iron Man, Tony knew that it was always going to end in some version of this.  
_

_He snaps his fingers.  
_

_And it changes the very fabric of the universe._

+++

It tugs at him. The darkness. Oblivion. Death.

He can't fight it.

There is barely anything left in him.

+++

Rhodey lands in front of him.

His platypus.

A hand brushing through Tony's hair, resting against the side of his face.

An almost-smile.

And utter desolation in Rhodey’s eyes as they meet Tony's.

+++

Peter scrambling up to him.

"Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark, we won! We did it!"

There is a desperate sort of pleading in the kid's voice, almost the exact tone of voice as in the aftermath of their last battle against Thanos, the 'I don't want to go' that rung in Tony's ears for _years_, when Peter was fading and Tony could do nothing but watch.

He likes 'We did it!' much better as a note to go out on.

But Rhodey’s hand is on Peter's shoulder, reassuring the kid and also telling Tony without words that he doesn't have to worry.

That Peter will be taken care of.

Same as Rhodey has always taken care of another too-bright-and-far-too-idealistic genius.

+++

"We’re going to be okay, Tony. You can rest now." 

Pepper.

His Pepper and her beautiful, soft smile telling him that everything is okay. Even as he can see her heart breaking in her eyes.

He never meant for her to get hurt.

He thinks she never expected anything else.

+++

He knows it's only the remnants of his old, trusty stubbornness that let him cling on to life for just that little bit longer, just long enough to at least give him the chance to say goodbye.

But even that is fading now.

There simply isn't anything left in him.

No fight, no strength, no nothing. It has all been taken by the infinity stones. Everything of him taken in exchange for returning everyone else.

Tony thinks it's absolutely, incredibly _worth it_.

The best damn deal he has made in his entire life.

+++

He slips away a little further, can barely make out Pepper's features anymore. Vision blurry, hearing gone.

He's barely there anymore.

And it's tugging at him, almost a little coaxing.

Vast and inky blackness. Cold and ever-lasting numbness.

And peace.

Tranquility.

If he had the strength, Tony thinks he would quite like to smile at the serene feeling beckoning him from the beyond.

+++

He lets go.

+++

Tony thinks he might have blinked. An instant of all-encompassing, all-consuming darkness.

+++

_"I am inevitable."_

_"And I am... Iron Man."_

+++

"Truth is, I _am_ Iron Man."

Mayhem.

There is a ringing in his ears.

Like the echo of a drum, like thunder rolling, like a deep bell being rung, the echo reverberating through his very bones, the sound so boundless, so all-consuming it makes it hard to even see straight.

Maybe that's the reason why the things in front of him just don't seem to be making any sort of sense.

Because, why in the world are there _reporters_? Why is there a whole _room_ full of _reporters_ in front of him, yelling for his attention.

Not that their questions are making a whole lot of sense to him.

He blinks against the confusion.

Just seconds ago, he was still on the battlefield, Thanos defeated, destruction everywhere around him, Rhodey and Peter and Pep in front of him.

And Tony died. He _knows_ he did. Knows it with utter, immovable certainty.

He had _felt_ himself dying.

Not like in Siberia where he had stubbornly forced his body through the motions to get himself some help or to find a way to help himself. Because he still had things to do.

Not like in that cave with the Ten Rings. Where freedom had only ever been a question of 'when' and not 'if'.

Not like any of those other life-threatening situations or almost-deaths over the years. Some medical, some courtesy of the villain of the week, some self-inflicted by way of reckless self-endangerment.

No, this had been different.

He had faded, literally _felt_ his grip on life loosen.

A blink of utter darkness.

So, how is he _here_?

Wherever _here_ is.

Tony blinks at the reporters all crowding around where he is standing at the front of the room, podium in front of him, Rhodey at his side.

He just blinks at them all, utterly stupefied, tries to make sense of his surroundings.

Although, seriously.

If this turns out to be his afterlife, he's going to be _pissed_. Being caught in a never-ending press conference, forever forced to answer the increasingly invasive questions from complete strangers while fully aware that no matter what he says it will never be quite enough to satisfy them? Yeah, that would certainly qualify as Tony's personal hell.

And in that case, hats off to the devil for coming up with this particular punishment. It's the only thing that is going to reliably drive him insane in a minimal amount of time.

In front of him, the reporters' yelling is increasing in volume, but he still can't quite make sense of any of their questions, still has to blink against the bright lights of the flashes going off around him.

It's too much.

The shock of it, the contrast of the utter, blank darkness suddenly switching to bright lights and color and so much damn noise from all sides almost has him stumble, flinching backwards.

Then, he can suddenly feel Rhodey's hand against his back, strong and sure. Like his platypus is bracing him, clearly having noticed that something is wrong but in no way making a spectacle out of it.

Another second, and suddenly, Pepper is there as well. Appearing from seemingly nowhere and easily maneuvering her way to stand in front of him, smoothly taking over answering the questions from the reporters. Like that had always been the plan.

Just like they used to. Like they used to play the press, the board, anyone else they came across. Like they used to when she was still his PA, always ready to step in with anything he might need.

Tony just lets himself be pushed aside. Utterly familiar with the one-two-step between them, even after so many years of ever-changing dynamics between them.

And it seems like a good idea to let her be the one to answer any questions. Seeing as none of this is making any sort of sense to Tony.

Just what, _in the name of science_, is going on?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. No clue where this came from. But I think I'm going to turn this into an absolutely shameless fix-it fic of everything I didn't like about the movies with the ultimate goal of changing Endgame. Because, seriously, screw that ending.
> 
> Also, it's been years since I've seen most of these movies, so I will likely have forgotten some things, but feel free to point out any mistakes and you're welcome to let me know if there is anything that particularly bothered you about canon and I'll see about adding it to my fix-it list :)
> 
> Be warned that I am unapologetically Team Iron Man and this fic is definitely going to reflect that!
> 
> Would love to know what you think :D


	2. Chapter 2

Tony listens to Pepper artfully maneuver her way through the media mayhem in front of them even as he keeps his lips tilted up in that slightly taunting grin that has been his failsafe media expression since he was still in his teens. The grin that is like catnip to journalists, designed to look like he is holding back some particularly salacious secret, and which has been driving reporters to the edge of their sanity since about 1985.

Keeping up that particular expression in front of people is effortless for Tony. Easy as breathing. Just one of his many masks, impenetrable to any onlookers.

No matter what might actually be going on in his head at the moment.

Like Tony's current stupefaction at his ever-increasing suspicion of possibly having ended up in the past. _Somehow_.

Because even despite his confusion, Tony's mind is already running through possibilities and potential scenarios, forever calculating probabilities as he gathers data. Such as the fact that Pepper at the podium looks too _young_, as does Rhodey for that matter. And Tony is also fairly certain he can actually see _Agent_ standing off to the side at the back of the room.

Not to even mention the questions the reporters in front of the stage are asking and the answers Pepper is giving.

It's enough for him to get at least some sort of grasp of the situation. As ridiculous as the conclusions he is drawing may seem.

It’s not even the questions about _Obie_ of all people – a topic which the press has long since learned not to bring up with him directly after having ended with one or more reporters in tears by the end of Tony nonchalantly ripping them apart verbally in retaliation – that give it away, but rather the multiple rather doubtful questions about ‘how’ Tony can be Iron Man and what that is supposed to mean and whether it was really _him_ in the suit.

Yeah.

There had only been a very short time in his life where people actually _doubted_ his claim of being Iron Man. Like, a couple of days at most. If that.

Tony had purposely and rather quickly done away with those doubts.

And he’d honestly think this might be some sort of dream, a hallucination, some weird version of that often-talked-about life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing, but there is also something about all of this that is almost _too_ surreal. Too surreal to be anything _but_ real.

Either way, it really seems like a good thing that Pepper took over answering any questions, seeing as he is still floundering. The implications of what is currently going on in front of him are honestly a little mindboggling.

And it's all blown out of the water when there is suddenly a familiar click in his ear, and for a second Tony can’t breathe when an oh-so-familiar voice speaks in his ear, "Sir? Your heart rate seems to be spiking. May I suggest returning backstage and sitting down?"

His breath stutters in his chest.

Because that's _JARVIS_ in his ear. His baby boy speaking to him as though he was never gone - as though he was never ripped from Tony's life - in the first place.

He tries to breathe through it, through the shock and the wonder and the desperation, his mind already running through the numbers and coming up with questions and possibilities. He honestly wants nothing more than to close his eyes and to simply bask in the mere thought of JARVIS being back without having to also consider the _other_ implications of that very fact.

The implications of who he would have had to _lose_ in order to come back to a time before he lost JARVIS. The mere thought is unbearable.

And Tony does his utter best not to fall apart right then and there.

Somehow manages to keep his bright and dazzling media smile on his face as he listens to Pepper finally go into her spiel about ‘no more questions’ and ‘upcoming press release’ and ‘press conference to be announced’.

Everything about this is honestly a little much.

Just the stark contrast between battle-for-the-universe-readiness and standing-around-on-a-stage-relaxation is already hard to get past.

Just bare _minutes_ ago, they had been fighting for their very _lives_, for _everyone’s_ lives, for the entire damn _universe_.

And somehow, against all odds, they had _won_. The battle had been over.

Tony’s snap had gotten rid of Thanos’ army within moments and everyone who had been fighting alongside them had suddenly found themselves without an opponent to fight against.

And in the aftermath, the battlefield had been silent, rather eerily so.

Or maybe that had just been Tony. Maybe it had just been a side effect of feeling his very life slipping through his fingers.

Either way, standing here now, trying to adjust to the sudden lack of post-battle adrenaline running through his veins as the ever-increasing muted darkness had started taking up his entire consciousness, _knowing_ that his own death was imminent.

And now he is suddenly feeling entirely fine, surrounded by bright light and color and the people in front of him clamoring for his attention.

It’s actually those faces that end up truly driving everything home for Tony.

Not who those faces belong to, but the things he can read in them. Or rather what is missing.

Because none of those faces in front of him carry those harsh, desperate, angry lines that had simply become the norm after the snap.

With Thanos having erased roughly half of the population from existence, _everyone_ had lost someone. And it had been obvious in the survivors’ faces.

Tony had kind of forgotten what people without survivor's guilt even looked like.

But letting his eyes drift across the faces in the crowd in front of the stage, Tony can’t help but note how utterly _free_ everyone looks, unburdened by the knowledge that in the greater scheme of things, humanity would find itself utterly powerless against some of the seemingly all-powerful tyrants frolicking through the universe.

These people are so very clearly untouched by Thanos’ madness.

It’s that very fact – more than anything else – that drives it home for Tony that _this_ is a different place entirely from where he was a couple of minutes ago. The proof keeps piling up and it's not like the idea of time travel seems nearly as ludicrous anymore as it would have a little while back.

But still.

_How in the world did I manage to _accidentally_ travel through time?_

+++

They are finally making their way off the stage, all three of them having quite a bit of practice in ignoring the still clamoring reporters shouting questions at them in the vague hope that they might stay a little longer.

The press conference at least gave Tony a chance to get past the shock and confusion, enough time to decide that for now he is just going to go with the flow and assume that he really skipped backwards in time. Back to the exact day where he announced himself to be Iron Man. That he traveled from the moment where it all ended to the moment where it all began.

It almost seems a little ironic.

_Well, I always knew the universe has a rather fucked-up sense of humor._

And, sure, once Tony is back in his workshop - in his workshop where _JARVIS_ will be waiting - he'll try to figure out if that is really what is going on or whether it's something else entirely. But time travel is his best theory at the moment, so he'll stick with that for now.

JARVIS has stopped trying to talk to him after Tony hadn't reacted to his last couple of comments, clearly realizing that there is something that has Tony purposely ignore him.

And Tony _desperately_ wants to talk to JARVIS, can barely focus on anything aside from that thought. But he simply doesn't trust himself not to promptly fall apart once he actually talks to JARVIS, once the fact that he has his baby boy back in his life actually becomes real to him.

It's just one more reason to get back to the privacy of his workshop as quickly as he possibly can.

Rhodey and Pepper keep sending him glances, something worried in their eyes whenever they focus on him. Clearly, they can tell that something is going on, as signified by the fact that either of them has yet to reprimand him for going off script regarding the whole I-am-Iron-Man issue.

And Tony remembers how this went last time, remembers perfectly how this entire day happened last time they were here.

Tony had dragged the two of them out to celebrate, Rhodey cheerfully following along and Pepper first protesting, claiming she had too much to get done, but in the end coming along as well.

It's one of his fonder memories.

Because no matter what might have happened in the years afterwards, Tony had always been proud of his decision to come clean to everyone about being Iron Man instead of trying to keep it all hidden, instead of trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes, to blindly follow SHIELD's directives.

And last time around, the three of them had spent the entire afternoon celebrating that fact and talking strategy, Tony promising Rhodey to talk to the brass about the suit at some point, and promising Pepper to attend whatever media stunts she came up with for damage control. Promising them both to give them a heads-up next time he did something like this.

Not that he had kept any of those promises.

Because when he finally got home that same night, he had found Nick in his living room, JARVIS once more compromised.

Fury had certainly known how to time his appearance in Tony’s life just right.

Nick had given him just enough time to fully develop the armor, to make him feel like he was in control, and then approached him right before Tony could try to work together with anyone else.

Like, for example, the military who Tony had been working with for decades at that point and who he’d honestly intended to work with again before Fury approached him, even if he had planned to put a couple of additional failsafes in place.

But before he could ever get around to that, Tony had been skillfully swept away by Fury and his idealistic rhetoric, about how Tony could help make a difference and about accountability and how they should work together to make things better for everyone.

It had been exactly what Tony had wanted to hear.

Never let it be said that Fury doesn't know how to play his puppets.

And Tony had fully bought into it.

So much so that he had given Fury everything the man wanted, without ever so much as considering asking for something in return. Because, they were on the same team, weren't they?

Except, apparently they hadn't been. Not really.

Sure, for both of them, the planet’s safety had always been their main concern, neither of them so much as attempting to put any personal agendas above everyone's safety.

Especially after New York happened and the threat of an alien attack became very very real.

But their ideas of how to go about keeping their planet safe had made a true collaboration practically impossible.

Still, at the beginning, Fury had made him feel like they were working towards the same goal, like they were on the exact same page, like he valued Tony’s contribution, and - most importantly - like he was offering Tony a chance at redemption for the very failings that had been haunting him every waking moment back then.

The man certainly knew exactly how to push Tony's buttons to make him dance to his tune.

But not this time.

This time, Tony knows better.

This time, Tony has already been through all of this.

This time, he might just make Fury dance to his tune instead.

And – most importantly – _this time_, SHIELD won't get even a single chance at hacking JARVIS.

He'll teach them collectively that so much as attempting to hack into JARVIS' system will be immediately followed by swift and brutal retaliation, no matter whose 'team' the offenders might claim to be on or what reasons they might try to give.

_This_ time around, no one gets a pass for messing with his babies.

Not one.

Tony is brought out of his thoughts of firewalls and failsafe protocols by Rhodey stepping in a little closer.

"Tones," his platypus says lowly, a definite question in his voice, even despite clearly not knowing what question he should be asking.

Tony looks at him.

They are already backstage, back to the dressing room, and Pepper is currently tapping away on her phone, most likely telling SI's PR department to get a statement ready to release to the press regarding Tony's unplanned announcement.

Tony glances between the two of them. He would honestly love to do the same thing he did last time, go out to celebrate and bask in the presence of his friends before their lives ever got so stupidly, ridiculously, _dangerously_ complicated.

But.

He first needs to get his head on straight, needs to figure out what exactly is going on - or at the very least, confirm his current working theory - and make up his mind on how to deal with it all.

What to do about... well, pretty much _everything_.

And JARVIS. First thing on his list is protecting his baby boy. From one-eyed pirates and double-crossing spiders and whoever else might get the bright idea to go after one of his kids.

_Everything else can come later._

So, he focuses on Rhodey. "Later," he returns. Breathes in deep, catches his eyes. "I promise. But... _later_." The last word admittedly comes out as something of a plea.

Rhodey’s eyes are rather intent as he watches him for a couple of moments. But finally he concedes, "Alright. I'll hold you to that."

Tony tries to quirk a grin. "Please do." He means it.

Because if there is one person whoTony already knows he is going to let in on exactly what is going on with him right now – once he himself is actually sure – it’s Rhodey.

Tony doesn’t yet know about anyone else, but telling his platypus isn’t even really a question.

Because Rhodey has always been right by his side, throughout it all.

And whether this is time travel or a parallel universe or something else entirely, _his_ Rhodey would absolutely kick his ass for even so much as thinking to try and going at this alone.

Not that Tony would ever want to go anywhere without his Rhodey bear right by his side anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So mini-freakout, realization what's happening, and JARVIS' appearance. Not much progress but I wanted to give an indication of where exactly Tony will stand on some of the issues I want to fix. Like SHIELDRA and Fury and so on. Would love to know what you think :D
> 
> Next chapter will likely consist mostly of JARVIS and Tony going on an inventing spree in the workshop :)
> 
> And thanks so much for all your comments and kudos! I adore you all for your input on things to fix about canon and it's already been pretty damn helpful because I had admittedly forgotten about that post-credits scene with Fury appearing in Tony's living room, so thanks for bringing that up!


	3. Chapter 3

Tony breathes out, can't help the slight hesitation as he reaches the front door of his mansion.

Just twenty minutes ago, he left Pepper and Rhodey behind and - instead of going out to celebrate with them like he did last time around - he asked Happy to take him home.

And usually Pepper would absolutely insist that Tony help her clean up the mess he just created, but this time - after a couple of seconds of eyeing him intently - she had simply agreed to postpone their crisis management meeting at least until tomorrow.

Tony doesn't know what she had been able to read on his face for her to let him go without any sort of protest, but he is still desperately grateful for the respite.

Because everything around him is _still_ only barely making sense right now.

But the one thing he does know is that _here_ \- wherever that may be in the greater scheme of parallel universes and alternate realities and diverging timelines - JARVIS is still _alive_.

And that is _everything_.

For now, everyone and everything else - Pepper, Rhodey, the press, SHIELDRA, the military, _the entire damn universe_ \- will just have to wait until Tony has made sure that nothing and no one will ever take his baby boy away from him again.

So, he went home.

Home, where JARVIS is waiting.

Home, where Obie ripped the arc reactor right out of his chest after taking JARVIS out of commission. Because Tony had been stupid enough to trust him.

Home, where there is a good chance that Fury might already be waiting for him, despite Tony being several hours earlier in coming home than he was last time around.

He pauses just the barest moment.

And then he steps through the door. Swallows.

“JARVIS?” And if his voice doesn't come out entirely steady, well, he doesn't think anyone can honestly blame him.

The reply is immediate, “Welcome home, Sir.” There is no odd warbling in his voice, no glitches. Just JARVIS' smooth, cultured voice. As it should be.

Tony breathes out, chest feeling too big and too small at the same time.

"Hey buddy," he adds on, voice low and almost cracking with grief and joy and so many emotions he can’t even put a name to quite yet they literally clog his throat, honestly a little overwhelmed as - with the reality that JARVIS is indeed _here_ \- the entire situation Tony has somehow found himself in suddenly seems to hit home.

But he quite simply doesn't have time to fall apart right now. Not yet.

Instead, he - with the assurance that JARVIS is _here_ and that he is _okay_ \- finally makes himself step fully inside his home.

He glances around.

But there doesn't seem to be anyone here. No one-eyed pirates reeling him in with promises of a better world, no backstabbing little spiders nagging him for his supposed ego, no bland-faced agents threatening him with tasers in case of noncompliance.

His living room is empty.

Good lord, what a relief. Seems like Tony getting here less than an hour after going off the SHIELD-prepared script for how to handle the Iron Man issue, was too much for even Fury and his little band of superspies to react to in time.

It seems Tony beat them here.

"Sir?"

It's not quite hesitation but there is a definite note of worry in JARVIS' voice and hearing it is enough to finally bring Tony out of his own thoughts.

He blinks, makes himself focus. “Anything of note happen while I was gone?” he then asks faux-casually.

“Not as far as I’m aware, Sir,” JARVIS replies promptly.

Which sounds good and all, would likely even reassure anyone else. But the phrasing and his _tone_ being just the slightest bit off - something tense and angry and almost a little helplessly uncertain in his voice, unnoticeable to anyone else but clear as day to Tony - tells him just how much JARVIS _isn't_ alright. How much JARVIS _abhors_ the fact that after Obie having messed with his systems, he simply can’t be entirely sure that something might not have slipped past his notice.

Which, yeah. That's simply not going to fly.

He will rip down this entire building and rebuild it from the ground up if that is what it takes to make sure his baby boy feels safe again.

He breathes in.

“Fortress protocol, JARVIS,” he asserts calmly as he starts making his way towards the stairs to his workshop. "I think we are in for a major overhaul."

“As you say, Sir.” There is no hesitation in JARVIS’ voice.

Fortress protocol. The protocol that is designed to put his entire mansion on lockdown. It seals off the entire building, even takes JARVIS off the grid, everything being looped through his own systems, nothing in or out. No people, no data, no communication, no nothing.

While it is in effect, the world could be ending and Tony wouldn't know until after the protocol is lifted again.

But, damnit all, he has priorities.

Tony already warned Pep and Rhodey, telling them he’ll need to redo the security on the mansion and that he'll be out of touch for a bit.

And once he has JARVIS safe and secure, then Tony can maybe even take an hour or two to let himself fall apart over everything that happened today, over the implications of finding himself in his own past, a place that is familiar but not, somewhere that _isn't_ home but at the same time still _feels_ like it.

But that will come after.

Right now, he has more important things to do.

+++

Tony stands in the doorway to his old workshop, glancing around.

There is shattered glass on the floor from Tony's tests of the suit, now joined by the shards of the display case that used to hold his old arc reactor, Pepper's joke gift that ended up saving his life, the gleaming metal ring proclaiming 'Proof that Tony Stark has a Heart' catching his eyes.

He breathes out.

So many memories are pressing into his mind. Good and bad and wonderful and truly abhorrent.

"Sir?" There is something careful in JARVIS’ voice, as his baby boy obviously picks up on something being wrong, being off, being _different_.

And Tony isn’t surprised.

JARVIS always could read him like no one else. So, him picking up on something about Tony having changed is really rather unsurprising. And Tony would love to explain, wants to reassure JARVIS that everything is alright, wants to tell him everything that already-but-not-yet happened, everything that Tony already knows he wants to fix and everything that he desperately wants to keep exactly the same.

In all honesty, Tony just wants to curl up in a corner in his workshop somewhere, under JARVIS’ watchful eye. Wants to shut his eyes and imagine that his world is perfect, that he somehow managed to get it _all_ back at once. That he has JARVIS, but without having to lose so much in the process, without resetting _everything_.

But.

No time for that now.

Apparent accidental time travel or not, JARVIS’ systems were compromised. First by Obie and soon a certain superspy will be trying to do the exact same thing.

Tony can’t even be entirely sure whether SHIELDRA might not have already used the brief shutdown of JARVIS to weasel their way into his systems, or even just slithered by the mansion to stick a couple of old-school bugs beneath the couch cushions.

Which not only means that Tony can’t actually talk freely right now in fear of someone listening in but it also means that there is a realistic chance of someone being in JARVIS’ systems _right now_.

Which is so absolutely unacceptable, Tony doesn't even have words for it.

“I was thinking-” Tony clears his throat when the words come out still sounding clogged with emotions. “I was thinking,” he tries again. “How about we build you another firewall or three? And then maybe a nice little side trip back into hardware mode and give your servers a complete overhaul?”

There is only the barest pause. “I would certainly appreciate an update,” JARVIS confirms, not saying just how desperately it must bother him that Obie had been able to bypass his systems, to completely take him out.

Tony nods, claps his hands. “Let’s get to it, then,” he says, already striding towards one of the terminals.

+++

Designing a completely new firewall for JARVIS is done comparatively quickly, despite it also being one of the more complex pieces of code Tony has ever written.

But it's for JARVIS' protection, so Tony throws his all into it.

As soon as the firewall is up and running, Tony asks, “How are you feeling, buddy?”

“Rather well now,” JARVIS answers easily. Which is reassuring but at the same time also makes Tony gnash his teeth in anger.

Because that phrasing once more makes it more than clear that JARVIS hadn’t been feeling well at all before. Not after having been taken out of commission entirely by Obie. Because Tony screwed up by trusting someone he really shouldn’t have.

It’s a mistake that has haunted him for more than a decade now, a mistake he repeated more than once. It's a mistake he won't make again.

“How about a couple of new protocols for how to deal with wannabe intruders?” he asks faux-casually.

“I would appreciate it, Sir,” JARVIS replies but Tony can almost taste the relief in his voice.

It only serves to spur him on.

And so what if the protocols they come up with end up being far more vicious in how they deal with anyone daring to so much as poke at JARVIS' systems than they ever used to be before.

But this time around, no one gets to mess with his tech, his bots, or his AIs. No one.

And, let’s be honest here, anyone who is stupid enough to deliberately hack into Tony’s private servers kind of only has themselves to blame for promptly finding their entire equipment fried in the aftermath.

“How about now, buddy?” he asks after another couple of hours coding and programming and implementing protocols.

“Much better, Sir.”

Tony nods. _That's more like it._

“Alright then, Jarv. Run a complete system check for me, would you?” he asks. “Flag anything that seems even the slightest bit off or even just in need of general improvement. And after that, we’ll go back into hardware mode, rebuild your servers from the ground up, kick them about fourteen years into the future.”

There is the slightest pause. And Tony knows that his baby boy absolutely picked up on the fact that Tony just said ‘fourteen years’. A rather specific number.

But in the end, the pause lasts barely a second or two before JARVIS just confirms, “Commencing with comprehensive system check now.”

Tony is sure that JARVIS knows exactly why he is hesitating to discuss what is going on freely.

First they have to fix any holes that Obie ripped into JARVIS' systems, holes which Tony knows from experience are large enough for even SHIELD to so very easily crawl through.

And afterwards, once JARVIS' systems are clear, they can start discussing time travel, fixing the world, and protecting the entire goddamn universe.

So, he sets anything else aside in order to trail JARVIS through his own systems and immediately starts fixing any issues that JARVIS flags for him.

Most things are minor, just simple obsolete protocols, a couple of files JARVIS doesn’t need any longer, things that would amount to junk files in a normal system. But after checking that there is nothing malicious hiding within those files, Tony decides to just sort them behind yet another firewall and then to leave them alone. Because obsolete or not, those files are still part of JARVIS, a testament to how his baby boy grew into who he is today.

Tony is not quite simply not even going to touch what amounts to part of JARVIS' personality. 

But anything else, any security issues, files left behind that are even remotely suspicious or might at some point give someone a way to weasel their way into his baby boy’s systems, even the slightest glitches or problems within his firewalls, Tony focuses all of his attention on fixing anything they come across, with JARVIS a forever-watchful shadow over his shoulder.

+++

“Sir.”

Tony immediately glances up.

They’ve been at it for a few hours now, finally done with the system check - even if JARVIS is doing another final scan, just to make sure they didn't miss anything - and Tony is currently in the process of designing some of the parts they'll need to manufacture for those new servers Tony is planning to give JARVIS.

Seeing as most of the tech he wants to incorporate comes directly from his own inventions more than a decade into the future, it's unsurprising that they'll have to build every teeny tiny bit of the new servers themselves.

_But, then again, what else is new?_

"Yeah, buddy?" he asks.

“There appears to be an attempt to breach my security,” JARVIS replies promptly. Before adding on dryly, "Originating from the front lawn no less."

Tony blinks. He _just_ told the world that he is Iron Man. Who’d be stupid enough to… Ah, right. SHIELD.

“One-eyed pirate?” Tony asks.

A slight pause. “Indeed.”

He doesn’t even hesitate. “Fry him, Jarv. _Fire and fury protocol_.”

"As you say, Sir."

It's one of those new protocols they added to JARVIS’ systems barely a couple of hours ago, and Tony took great joy in naming this particular one for the one-eyed pirate himself.

He thinks it's only fair, seeing as Fury _is_ the reason he came up with a protocol that will not only have JARVIS fry any and all tech the pirate is carrying on his person but also follow any sort of uplink or connections from that same tech, trail it all the way back to the source, back to anyone even vaguely involved in this attempt at getting past the newly instated firewalls.

And then proceed to fry that tech as well.

Servers, computers, personal tech, down to the last damn iPod so much as in the general vicinity.

Tony doesn't intent to hold anything back this time around. He already lost his baby boy once. So, no one gets to so much as _touch_ JARVIS from this point forward. And anyone who tries will find themselves in a world of trouble.

Yeah, people – meaning SHIELDRA – are going to learn very quickly and very effectively just how bad of an idea it is to attempt messing with JARVIS from this point on.

They’ll only have themselves to blame.

Because when he says 'fry' he really does mean _fry_.

SHIELD better be up to date with their fire safety measures or at least have a couple of fire extinguishers within reaching distance. Or their entire tech department might just be going up in flames right this minute.

Last time around, Fury used that backdoor Obie had ripped open to take out JARVIS, and even after everything that happened Tony had never quite closed that security gap, always so very uncertain of his own ability to make the right choices, to keep himself in check. So, he had trusted SHIELD to do it for him in case he ever went too far.

Yet another mistake. A grave one.

But now, for the first time ever since he found out just how mistaken he had been about trusting Obie, Tony knows _better_. As much as he might doubt himself on any given decision he makes, he now also knows with utter certainty that if it truly comes down to it, Tony _will not falter_.

No matter what power he might be holding in his hands at that moment.

Because he had the Infinity Stones at his disposal. It had been up to _him_ to save the universe or to bend reality to his personal wishes. And Tony had chosen everyone else above himself.

He still doesn't quite know how this entire time travel thing happened, but he knows his snapped worked to get rid of Thanos, watched the alien crumble to dust.

So, despite his insecurities and self-recriminations, his guilt and the many mistakes he has made over the years, his self-doubts and traumas and what have you not, Tony is finally certain that he doesn’t need some shady-as-fuck organization to keep him in check.

As long as he has the people he trusts - Rhodey, Pepper, Happy - on his side, telling him he is still on the right track, he'll manage just fine on his own.

So, screw SHIELD and their inferior hacking that had required Tony to leave a huge, obvious fault in his systems in order for them to get through at all.

Those days are gone.

Not that SHIELD will even know they ever had a chance in the first place.

Tony can only be grateful that whatever power decided to drop him back into his own past, did it all the way back before he ever truly had any contact with secret agencies and superspies. Because this way they won’t ever know that something changed.

They’ll have no choice but to take his actions at face value.

“Fire and fury protocol completed, Sir,” JARVIS announces.

"Hm," he hums absently as he tweaks the structure of the circuit boards he is currently designing. "SHIELD still standing?"

"Only _just_," JARVIS replies in that neutral tone of his, almost covering the definite vindictive satisfaction thrumming in his voice.

Hearing it makes Tony grin.

Because_, that's the way it should be._

He also isn't worried about any sort of retaliation SHIELD might try to throw at him for this. He can take them. Easily. Politically, financially, economically, _physically_. Well, the last one at least as long as he's in the suit.

But SHIELD only ever stood a chance against him because Tony _let_ them.

There is a reason why Fury worked so damn hard to get Tony under his thumb. Because he always knew that while SHIELD profited endlessly from having Tony in their back pocket, Tony was never the one who needed SHIELD, as much as he might have let himself be convinced otherwise.

It was always the other way around.

Tony could walk up to any government agency tomorrow and offer his collaboration or consultation or anything really. And they'd gleefully jump at it.

So, this time around, if SHIELD wants Tony on their side - if they want him to work with them, if they want him to lend them so much as a _spare light bulb - _he won't let them sneak in the back door.

No, _this time_, they'll damn well have to work for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Just some pure JARVIS&Tony goodness, because there really can never be enough of that. Would love to know what you think :D  
And thanks for all your comments and kudos (*^^*)


	4. Chapter 4

Tony leans over the terminal, holographic displays illuminating the workshop around him.

He's still in the middle of designing and tweaking various parts they'll need to upgrade JARVIS' servers.

Right now, he's fine-tuning the design of the new processing unit he is planning to give JARVIS, while Jarv himself is running calculations for him and already manufacturing the newly designed motherboard and the modified RAM chips, which they'll need to even get _started_ on the new servers, to give his systems that first boost.

They'll likely have to cycle through a couple of hardware updates over the next few weeks until Tony actually has JARVIS’ systems where he wants him, simply because it's been _fourteen years_. Which might as well be a century or two where Tony's tech is concerned.

Well, for the first round of updates, they'll just go with the more-forceful-than-elegant approach, meaning the motherboard is initially just going to be a sort of extension to JARVIS' current one to bridge between his tech now and anything Tony intends to add, and they can simply produce the RAM chips en masse for now and add a boatload of those instead of having to immediately reinvent the 2023 state-of-the-art tech Tony is used to.

But. The CPU is a different matter.

For one, JARVIS outgrew the standard sort of CPU normal computers run on literally _decades_ ago, forcing Tony to come up with something entirely new if he wanted his baby to be able to grow freely, unhindered by any constraints of the tech he could call his own.

Because the CPU might be a normal computer's brain, but with all that his baby boy is, his CPU is essentially JARVIS' _heart_.

And thus, he is going to get nothing but the absolute best Tony can make it right now.

Because, while freely exchanging the motherboard and the RAM and all the other various elements that will give JARVIS his future new processing power, Tony doesn't want to have to switch the CPU more than once or twice _at most_ after this first update.

So, right now Tony is designing the processor to bridge the divide between his old tech, the middle ground that they are planning to add right away, and everything they will want to add over the next couple of days.

Which is quite honestly a bitch.

If only because the difference between the tech he has in his workshop right now and what he is used to from more than a decade into the future is almost ridiculous. So ridiculous in fact, it almost makes him want to cry.

Sure, he might have all the designs for his tech in the future in his head, but sadly _knowing_ which of his designs will work and actually building the full setup, will take even him a couple of days if not weeks to get done.

Sadly, just throwing out everything he has now and simply reinventing the tech of the future right this moment is plainly impossible. He'll have to cover at least a couple of steps in between.

Like, first he’ll actually have to redesign the arc reactor that used to power the Stark Tower and the Avengers Compound, in order to even get the power necessary for the true monster that were his servers in the future. Not to even mention that he'll have to set some time aside at one point to once more 'invent' an element.

And let him just say how absolutely _strange_ it is to be tasting coconut again, a taste he has never been able to quite make up his mind about, whether it reminds him of a rather desolate time in his life of personal betrayals, and torture, and almost dying in a cave. Or whether it reminds him of his arguably greatest victory, of inventing the Iron Man suit in spite of all odds being against him.

Well, it's probably a bit of both.

Which reminds him that he’ll have to reinvent his suit as well. Nothing against Mark II that is standing off to the side, but... Well, that suit is so ludicrously outdated in his mind, he honestly isn't even sure how well he'll manage at piloting that version of it now.

He already misses his nanotech suit, the reassurance of always having his suit on him and the impossibility of anyone ever taking it from him. Oh, and the forcefield tech as well.

Still, just knowing which of his designs will work, doesn't mean that he has every teeny tiny detailed spec in his head. That bit was always more JARVIS and FRIDAY's domain.

Alas, those things will have to wait.

He already checked the first thing - JARVIS' safety - off the list, and he'll update the security alongside any hardware updates as well. Knowing that no one is ever going to get into his servers and touch any of his babies again - no shady spy agencies and most certainly no weird-ass, genocidal alien AIs - already lets him breathe a little easier.

Once he has the first round of updates done, he'll give Jarv some time to get settled into his new systems and probably start on the arc reactor or something. And at some point, he and JARVIS will also have to talk about just what is going on. You know, the whole involuntary time travel thing.

He's been holed up in his workshop, able to ignore everything going on around him beyond updating JARVIS so far. Nothing beyond making his baby boy safe and unbeatable by anything that even exists on earth.

Because thing is, Tony _knows_ alien tech now. Has had the time to study it, knows its strengths and pitfalls, and he spent _months_ analyzing every scrap of data and every single line of code he could find of Ultron to figure out what happened and how the alien AI had been able to so very easily take out his baby boy.

So, he is fully intending to get JARVIS' systems to a level where he'll kick Ultron's ass six ways to Sunday. In the hypothetical scenario of the two AIs ever meeting again.

Something that Tony is rather hell-bent on preventing.

He is not letting that scepter into his home ever again. Hell, he'll sooner take a little side-trip to space and catapult the scepter in the vague direction of Pluto, and damned if he cares who finds it freely drifting through space, before he'll risk having it get near JARVIS again.

And, well, he spent quite a bit of time on an alien space ship after The Snap, and then spent even more time designing tech together with a literal cyborg and a walking, talking racoon, both of whom had been rather tech-savvy and had casually thrown more than a couple of earth-shattering revelations his way as they went along.

Sure, Tony never had the chance to fully integrate that most recent round of that newly-found knowledge into his own tech, too busy building time machines and all-powerful gloves and whatever else. But he is admittedly feeling a little giddy at the prospect of doing just that, the ideas cycling through his mind, what he will be able to _do_ with it.

Just as soon as he has JARVIS fully upgraded, once he has time to re-program FRIDAY in her entire glory, once he is no longer dying from palladium poisoning, once he has a more workable Iron Man suit designed.

Yeah.

And maybe along the way, Tony and his favorite lab partners can go about integrating some of those newest revelations as well.

But.

His workshop and JARVIS' presence and having something to focus his entire attention on has also let him ignore everything else. Has let him ignore the fact that he is somewhere he kind of shouldn't be, that he still doesn't know how he even got here, much less _why_ he seems to have been thrown across time.

Though, there is a strange sort of nostalgia, being here.

The place where so many of his major life decisions started and were put into action, decisions that changed his life so far beyond anything even he had been able to anticipate at that point.

It's not all good, but it's certainly not all bad either. This is the workshop where he turned his idea of the suit - the idea that had been born in a cave from pure desperation and furious anger and utter stubbornness - into reality, turned it from its metal-scrap version into the sleek design that soon everyone had come to know as Iron Man. The workshop where he built his first miniaturized arc reactor, created a new element, turned himself into a superhero as much as it hadn't actually been about that in the beginning.

And then, the mansion was destroyed. One too many bad decision made, Killian and AIM and the whole mandarin debacle and almost losing Pepper in the process.

Tony breathes in deep, tries to reroute his brain away from that line of thought. Not only because he truly doesn't like thinking about that particular screw up of his, but also because that way lie the thoughts of everything he'd like to do differently. If only he had a chance.

Which he now apparently has.

Because, _time travel_.

And, honestly, screw whoever is in charge up there.

They had won. Tony's side had won.

And now it's all been turned into _nothing_.

Well, nothing but knowledge of things potentially to come. Which, honestly, is quite a bit more than just 'nothing', an advantage beyond anything anyone could ever hope for.

But still, so far he's been doing his best to keep his mind away from his current situation, the implications, the many things that might be, might happen, might have been. The things that have already happened but now no longer did. Things he worked for, things he bled and literally died for. And all of it is now erased. All of his mistakes right alongside all of his successes.

The thought is as frustrating as it is liberating.

And it's not like this is the first time something absolutely absurd, should-not-be-possible happens to Tony, turning his life upside down.

But even despite aliens and superheroes and gods and all-powerful, mystical gem stones. This certainly still takes the cake.

Accidental time travel. And not the kind of time travel he himself invented on his quest to save the universe, but rather the comic book version of it. The kind where he didn't bodily travel through time and can now change things as he pleases, but rather the kind where just his mind, his awareness, his memories traveled back, replacing past-Tony's mind with future-Tony's mind.

Which, from a scientific standpoint, quite simply makes _no sense whatsoever_.

Bodily time travel barely made sense, but at least there were scientific theorems and laws to base all of that on.

But this? Actual mind travel? Now _that's_ honestly just ludicrous.

Seriously, screw magic. Or whatever other cosmic power decided to drop him into his own past.

As much as it pains him to admit, this just smacks of some sort of magical interference and he'd be honestly surprised to find if traditional science of any kind actually played any sort of role in this.

And if it _was_ indeed magic that brought him here, then the list of questions just keeps getting even longer.

Because, why _him_? Why _here_? Why not someone else or any other time?

Does his previous time travel have anything to do with it? Is it some sort of side-effect of him having used the Infinity Stones? Are the others who did the whole let's-save-the-universe-via-time-travel thing going to show up in this timeline as well or is it just him?

Even if he assumes that this is somehow his own fault and that some subconscious wish to be able to get another chance, to do it all over again, had the Infinity Stones send him back here, there is no way even his _subconscious_ mind would have ever wished to do it alone. He'd at least have taken his family with him. Pep and Morgan and Rhodey and Happy and FRIDAY. There is no way Tony's subconscious would ever have wished to be somewhere where they _weren't_.

But if it wasn't actually _his_ doing at all, if this isn't actually on _him_, then what in the world is he _doing_ here?

"Sir," JARVIS speaks up, rather abruptly bringing Tony out of his thoughts. "Miss Potts is on the line for you."

Tony glances up, honestly a little surprised at the announcement. Not so much at the fact that Pep is calling him, but rather that JARVIS apparently feels the need to announce it in this manner. Like it's a question whether Tony actually wants to take the call.

Which is... odd.

Because this is still the time _before_ Tony became paranoid for her safety, when Pep still had full access to everything in his life simply because there hadn't been any superpowered boogiemen hiding around corners yet, and Tony didn't yet feel like he had to keep things from her in order to keep her safe.

Although, all things considered, maybe JARVIS' question isn't actually that strange.

His baby boy has definitely picked up on the fact that something about Tony has changed. He would honestly be surprised if JARVIS doesn't already have several working theories on what exactly might be going on with Tony, including probability calculations and even various projections for potential outcomes.

It's not like Tony has been sparing with the hints.

JARVIS is probably fully aware that Tony right now isn't quite the Tony who left the workshop before that rather fateful press conference.

And thus, his baby boy is likely redoing his risk and security assessment of everyone around Tony. The fact that Obie - one of the people who they used to trust implicitly - also tried to kill Tony several times over so very recently, is more than likely also contributing to JARVIS redoing his threat matrix. For everyone.

And one of the elements of reassessing everyone is to take his cues for each and every single person individually from how Tony reacts to their mention from now on. And then likely adjusts his protocols on how to deal with them in the future.

Honestly, that streak of vicious, uncompromising protectiveness all of his kids seem to develop at some point? Tony really has no idea where they get it from.

But, point is, JARVIS is waiting for Tony's reaction to Pepper.

And, well, Tony might not have yet figured out what exactly he is going to do about her - what with them being friends at this point in time, great friends even, despite their admittedly somewhat strange dynamic...

_Dear lord, Pepper is actually still my PA right now._

But.

The two of them also aren't anywhere near what they became in the future.

They haven't encountered any of the ups and downs yet. The ever-growing friendship between them, their romantic relationship, the seamless transition from friends to lovers, the cracks that appeared when the weight of Iron Man and superheroes and protecting the entire world became too much of a strain on their relationship. So many mistakes made Tony made, inside and outside of their relationship, the miscommunication and less-than-optimally set priorities.

And somehow they had made it through all of that. Tony and Pepper. Together.

Because, no matter where their personal and romantic and professional life choices brought them, she has always been _his Pepper_.

The one who has always been on _his_ side, everyone else second. The one who - even when he made her his CEO - always angled for whatever would be most advantageous for the both of them.

And in the end, despite all of their struggles, all of Pepper's pleas for Tony to _please_ put his own life first, to for once put Iron Man second, she has still always been at his side.

She chose _him_. Just as he chose her.

They were _married_.

Tony and Pepper were married for _five_ years. He promised himself to her forever and he meant it. Truly, unequivocally _meant it_.

And, by god, they had been so happy. Even in the aftermath of Thanos and the Snap, they had been happy. They had a _family_ together.

Just the two of them. And then, the _three_ of them.

And the mere thought of Morgan, his little princess, sends a lance of pain through him, a pain so sharp his breath stutters in his chest, feels like his heart is tearing into pieces in his chest, like he is suffocating and drowning in grief and something is making it impossible to breathe.

"Sir?"

Tony blinks, JARVIS' voice bringing him back to the presence, only then becoming aware of having brought up a hand to rub at the center of his chest, right above the arc reactor. Right where it feels like his heart is ripping apart in his chest.

"Yeah, buddy." He clears his throat when the words come out sounding clogged, blinks his not entirely dry eyes.

"Shall I tell Miss Potts to call back at a later point in time?" JARVIS asks, his neutral question not at all masking his careful tone.

Tony blinks, shakes his head in reply.

And reminds himself that _in his mind_ Pepper may be his wife, the mother of his daughter, the love of his life.

But.

This Pepper also isn't _his_ Pepper. Not really.

He has to remember that - no matter what his own feelings say - this may be Pepper, but she is still not his Pepper, the Pepper who chose him, the one who married him, the one who in the end told him that if he had a way to bring the same sort of happiness that the two of them had found in the wake of Thanos' terror to everyone else, he didn't really have a choice in the matter.

She'd said it with that same resigned air of hers mixed with pure fondness that she had developed so long ago, so very used to watching him take off in his suit to save the world from one threat or another.

She knew that he would have left things as they were, would have stayed home with her and Morgan, if she had truly asked him to. Just as she knew that doing nothing despite having a way to save everyone else would have killed him inside.

Tony can't help but smile a little at that thought.

_She knows me too well. _

He pauses. Then breathes out slowly, painfully.

_Correction. _Knew_ me too well._

Tony blinks himself back to the present. The present that is his past. But also holds his future. Whatever that future may look like.

"Patch her through," he finally replies to JARVIS' question.

The briefest delay as JARVIS hesitates, then a click.

"Hey, Pep," he greets brightly, forces at least some measure of cheer into his voice despite the desolate grief for so many things lost constricting his chest, dragging through his veins like knives, tearing him up from the inside.

"Tony," she returns, something definitely careful in her voice, most likely still uncertain just what might have caused his lapse during the press conference.

He even gets it.

There hasn't ever been a press conference that had Tony just falter like he did yesterday. Even when drunk, on drugs, sleep-deprived and so high he wouldn't have been able to tell you his own _name_, he just doesn't falter in front of journalists.

That's been trained out of him since he was about four and a half years old.

So, her worry is understandable.

"What can I do for you, Pep?" he asks, makes sure his voice sounds light but not overly flippant.

Her calling him but not actually showing up in person is a rather clear sign that she is trying to give him time to recollect himself.

Because usually she would just show up with a folder of papers in hand, easily strong-arm him into conceding to the truly important demands and then spend another thirty minutes pretending to try to get him to make further concessions, while knowing full well that Tony is never going to give so much as an inch.

It's something about them that never quite changed.

Tony being able to tell when she is talking about something actually important and agreeing to show up to help - be it board meetings, galas, charity events, or anything else - but in return she always kept anything that didn't truly require his presence away from him.

They've always been an awesome team, ever since they first started working together.

And he might need a little more time to figure out exactly what to do about her, but he still hopes that this easy camaraderie of theirs will simply never change.

No matter which timeline or alternate universe, or whatever _other_ batshit insane twists of fate the universe might throw at him in the future. Or - for that matter - in the _past_.

'Cause, you know, that's a thing apparently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a purely introspective chapter. Which I honestly didn't expect but I apparently needed this chapter to have Tony work through some of his current situation... Well, for a certain value at least XD Next chapter will definitely have Rhodey actually making an appearance, as well as Tony venturing outside the workshop and start implementing some of the changes he's planning to make to everything, not only to SI, but also to the US government, to earth in general, as well as to the universe at large.
> 
> Would love to know what you think :D 
> 
> And thanks so much for all your comments and kudos! You guys are awesome!


	5. Chapter 5

Tony spins lazily on his chair in front of one of the terminals.

The workshop is once more fully secure.

They are done with the first round of hardware updates, JARVIS got a whole host of new protocols to keep everyone else from ever so much as poking at his systems, and with everything running to satisfaction now, JARVIS also did a scan of the house, once more fully in control of every single element in the entire mansion, precluding anyone from gaining entrance or even so much as listening in.

And that knowledge has him more relaxed than he's felt in literally years now.

The knowledge that JARVIS is keeping watch, but this time very much _without_ Tony adding a couple of backdoor protocols to his systems, granting SHIELD a certain amount of access, as he had last time around, just for emergencies.

He should have gotten rid of those protocols the first time SHIELDRA abused that power he had given them.

Well, he is fairly certain they never actually realized that they were abusing the leeway he had given them. No, it’s far more likely they truly thought they were ‘cracking his systems’ rather them Tony having purposely left a couple of cracks in his firewalls for them to slip through.

_Hm, that would certainly fit with their rather over-inflated sense of self-importance, wouldn’t it._

But. It’s different this time around. Everything is secure now.

And Tony can already feel himself breathe easier with the knowledge that there is nothing and no one on this earth able to touch JARVIS now.

So.

On to the next point on his list of things to get done: The suit.

Well, JARVIS already manufactured him another suit - while Tony had still been busy designing the server upgrades - but it’s only a suit of his old design. Like _really_ old, one of his very first designs, Mark 2 to be exact. Clunky and everything barely workable and every single element of it a scientific breakthrough about twenty years ahead of its time but not yet the least bit optimized, nowhere near any of his later designs... Tony isn’t entirely certain he’ll even remember how to pilot the thing.

He’s gotten so absolutely used to his sleek and smooth newer designs. The ones that feel like a second skin, that function instinctually, that don’t require to _think_ but simply _do_, the suit following his every command like an extension of his own body.

Good god, he already misses his old suits from the future.

Still, the knowledge that he has a suit – _any suit at all_ – around is more than a little reassuring. Just as a backup. You know, in case some sort of catastrophe were to go down and Tony needs to jump in.

'Cause you just never know.

And, yes, he spent a bit of time on scanning the news, reading up on recent happenings and even broader historical events, just to see whether there is anything obviously _different_ about this place, the here-and-now Tony has so suddenly found himself in compared to history as he himself remembers it. But based on what he found it truly seems like he somehow landed in his own past. Well, this just being some sort of alternate universe or parallel dimension is also still very much on the table.

The point is, he isn’t entirely sure yet whether there are any significant differences between Tony’s reality and this one. Differences that might still make themselves apparent - most likely at the most inopportune moment, going by his personal experience of the universe having a laugh at his expense - or whether this is in fact truly _his_ past... Even then, his mere presence here might already have changed things irreversibly the very moment he showed up. Which might very well lead to some sort of new catastrophe in the future.

So. Better be prepared.

Tony has long since learned to live by the motto of 'hope for the best, prepare for the worst', an adage that has proven its veracity several times over.

_It even ended up saving the universe once, you know_, he grins sardonically to himself.

Which brings him back to the spare suit JARVIS manufactured as a failsafe, a reassurance, a just-in-case. A suit of his old design, the mere sight of which kind of makes Tony want to cry and not for any sentimental reasons but solely because the forced technological regression honestly makes him cringe.

But. Making sure Jarv is safe was always going to come first, and only now that they are done with the first round of updates, Tony can start re-inventing one of his newer suit designs.

Which brings him to his next problem.

Because even if he _wanted_ to simply sketch out his Bleeding Edge design and have JARVIS manufacture it, he actually _can’t_. Sure, he does have every detail of every single suit design he ever made – the failures and successes and the designs he built on – in his head, all the calculations and teeny tiny details. But that really won’t get him anywhere. Not yet. If only because there are still quite a number of other things he needs to ‘invent’ first, before he can even consider building his newer suits.

The world simply doesn’t _have_ what he needs to build any of his newer suits. _Tony_ doesn’t have what he needs to build them.

Hell, his Bleeding Edge design had been about twenty or thirty years ahead of everyone else’s tech back _before_ he traveled fourteen years into the past. If not more.

So, right now, he is kind of starting from zero.

Even Tony will need a bit of time to actually re-calculate all the specs, recreate the specific alloys he’ll need, write the various protocols that will allow JARVIS to pilot his suits if needed, to re-gather the data of all those endless flight tests and trials and so so many failed attempts during the invention process, all of which JARVIS had always had nicely stored away and been able to promptly pull out for him to look at whenever he decided to fiddle with some spec or other. But they just don’t have any of that data right now, so being able to avoid any of the pitfalls he went through last time while inventing his suits, already knowing what will work and what won’t this time around, Tony will have to at least recreate some of that data.

So, yeah, having the designs themselves in his head or not, it'll still take him a couple of weeks, if not a couple of months, to skip thirty or forty years ahead technology-wise of the rest of the planet, never mind his _own_ current tech. To redesign and reinvent and rediscover everything, all the itty bitty tiny scientific advancements in between.

Like, for example, the modified arc reactor to power his suits, or like the new element Tony will first have to invent to _work_ with said arc reactor.

Not only because of, you know, _health reasons_, but also because he simply needs the new and improved arc reactor in order to even power any of his newer suit designs at all.

Those babies ate the comparatively meager power output of his old arc reactors for breakfast. Quite literally. Any of his later designs would merrily wipe out _an entire palladium core_ just by powering up, never mind lasting for the initial, obligatory systems check, or actually letting Tony _use_ any of the suit's features.

Yeah.

So, new element first, then the new arc reactor, and only _then_ can he finally get to working on kicking the design of his suits into the future as much as he reasonably can.

While keeping his current tech limitations in mind.

Tony tilts his head in thought. _And maybe also try not to go from already-ridiculously-advanced-metal-armor to scaring-the-shit-out-of-the-rest-of-the-world-by-seemingly-throwing-science-to-the-wind by skipping right to one of my newer Bleeding Edge designs_.

Yeah, the world might be used to him always being a few steps ahead, but that might be going a little too far…

Well, he can always keep the outwardly apparent design as is, cover a couple of steps in between, and keeping everyone none the wiser about the various, groundbreaking gadgets he is all the while secretly adding.

If only to drag the less-than-scientifically-minded masses along, and also to give the rest of the scientific community a chance to watch him progress from Mark 2 all the way to the nanotech versions. It should make things at least slightly more palatable to the rest of the world if his next design is more along the lines of Mark 6 or maybe Mark 8... maybe with a couple of gadgets from Mark 17 thrown in while he's at it...

And as long as he takes care to introduce the more advanced features one by one to the gawking masses, it's not like anyone will actually be able to pick up on the fact that he'll be skipping a couple - or more like, a couple of _hundred_ \- steps in between. His competition will simply be too far behind to realistically assess the feasibility of the progress he’ll be making between one suit and the next.

Tony invented his first suit out of virtually nothing, out of _scraps_. He simply came up with the idea and _made_ it. In a cave. With only Yinsen’s steady hands to help. Even Mark 1, as clunky and rough and barely functioning as it had been, had already been far ahead of anything anyone else had been able to produce at the time.

The leap he’d made between Mark 1 and his first real Iron Man suit, Mark 2, had left his _own_ tech behind by about a decade or two, something entirely new, something never-seen-before, opening up entirely new fields of science and engineering and programming.

And from that point forward, Tony had only picked up speed as he pressed forward where his suits were concerned, leaving everyone else in the dust.

Even back in the future - _fourteen years_ into the future - no one had yet been able to even match his earliest Iron Man designs. Sure, there had been a couple of other generally functional suit designs around at that point, everyone trying to copy his Iron Man suit ever since Tony first invented it. But even their best attempts hadn't been anywhere close even to his first real design, Mark 2.

If only because, worldwide technological advancement aside, they had all been missing the key element of Tony's suits.

JARVIS. Or FRIDAY for that matter.

It’s something everyone – aside from his Rhodey bear who simply knows better – always seems to forget. Tony might be the one piloting the suit, calling the shots, but he always has one of his babies along as a - more often than not rather opinionated - co-pilot, running algorithms in the background, checking the integrity of the system, filtering data for him to assess and base his decisions on, and so on.

And while the world might have done its best to catch up with his technological advances, engineering and weapons and even programming, no one - and he does mean absolutely _no one_ \- had ever even come close to creating an AI like Tony's babies.

Thus, their efforts to copy his suits had been doomed right from the start.

The point is, seeing as he'll be leaving the rest of the world in the dust anyway, he might as well skip a few steps in between and maybe motivate everyone else to ride along in his slipstream. Onwards to the future and all that.

Slowing down a little for everyone else’s benefit is a rather small sacrifice to make if it also lets him avoid making anyone unnecessarily suspicious of him. He sure as hell doesn’t want to give anyone so much as an inkling that there might be anything off about him right now, so trying to keep an at least somewhat low profile might actually be a good idea.

Well, as much as you _can_ keep a low profile of any sort while also flying around in a gleaming gold-and-red metal marvel of science.

Then again, even if someone were to get suspicious of him at some point, no one on earth will ever even _consider_ something as ludicrous as Tony actually being his future self. That’s simply much too far out of the box for human thinking.

_Be grateful for small mercies and all that._

On that note, it’s quite generous of the powers-that-be to have dropped him off at this exact moment in time, before everything truly started. Because this is not only right before Tony stepped into the big-boy political arena, before he truly started interacting with some of the bigger players that will haunt him for decades to come who didn’t give him and his playboy persona much of a thought _before_ but will be watching his every move from here on out. But also right after the publicly known, traumatic event of his capture in Afghanistan, the best excuse anyone could wish for when trying to explain any ‘changed behavioral patterns’ away.

With all of the more dangerous players only starting to flock around him _now_, none of them will be able to even tell that anything about him might have changed, that he is treating them any differently from the norm. Simply because they don't yet know what 'the norm' looks like.

So, if he had to time travel at all, this moment in time is quite possibly the best he could have honestly wished for.

"Sir?" JARVIS speaks up, interrupting his vague thoughts about a future that was and mistakes that could still be and how to make things _better_ this time around.

"Yeah?" he returns lazily.

"Would this be an appropriate time to inquire about the particulars of the situation you seem to have so unexpectedly found yourself in?"

Tony feels his lips quirk up into a grin. Of course JARVIS has figured out by now just what might be going on with him. Maybe not the timetravel-or-possibly-alternate-reality part, but certainly the fact that Tony _then_ and Tony _now_ aren’t the same Tony.

"Go right ahead, buddy," he replies, grin still in place.

"Am I right in assuming that the concepts of space and time might in fact be even more relative than previously assumed?"

Tony grins at one of the cameras. "Got it in one."

JARVIS doesn’t even pause, clearly having already reached that particular conclusion on his own and only asking that question for the sake of establishing a baseline for their conversation. "And, might I ask, how exactly did this discovery on space-time-continuum malleability come about? Your initial reactions indicate that your temporal displacement might not have been intentional on your part."

“It most certainly wasn’t,” Tony huffs, still not entirely over some mystical powers-that-be deciding to drop him off somewhere in the past without his say-so. If only because he doesn’t actually have an answer regarding the how _or_ the why of him being here. Possible time travel aside, he still doesn’t know what to make of him having been dying – having _died_ – from using the Infinity Stones and then suddenly just… _not_ anymore. “As for the ‘how’…” He shrugs, admits, “Not entirely sure yet, actually."

Because ‘there be aliens, loads and loads of them, and they’ll turn earth into their personal battlefield for a war that is quite a bit older than our planet itself, and they bring along these colorful, glowing, definitely-not-scientifically-plausible stones of all-encompassing almightiness and when I tried to use them to clean up someone else’s mess those stones – for some reason that still isn’t at all apparent to me – seem to then have decided to send me here in retaliation’ isn’t really much of an explanation at all, now is it. The entire thing barely even makes sense in his own head.

Which also reminds him that at this point in time, he - and thereby also JARVIS - hadn’t actually come in contact with any aliens yet. This is before the Chitauri, before Thor and Loki, before anything extraterrestrial ever crossed their path. Best give JARVIS a heads-up on that end then.

"On a not particularly unrelated note, though: As it turns out, those stories about little green men? _Also_, far more accurate than previously hypothesized.” He widens his eyes dramatically as shakes his head in mock ridicule, “Seriously. Some of them are _literally_ green.”

There is the briefest pause, JARVIS clearly integrating that particular bit of information. Before he just asks, voice calm and even as always, “It would be safe to assume their origin to be a little farther away than Mars or even our entire solar system, then?”

Tony feels his lips quirk into another grin.

Leave it to JARVIS to not only take Tony at his word about aliens being an actual thing, but also to take that bit of information and simply extrapolate from there, building on ‘aliens being a thing’, the unlikelihood of them having been hiding on their neighboring planets, and how it must mean that earth will soon start poking far beyond the borders of what they’ve seen of space so far.

“Yup,” he nods cheerfully, and then he can’t quite help the excited grin he feels spreading over his face as he eagerly adds on, “And they got _stuff_, Jarv. So much _stuff_." Tony still isn’t entirely over all the amazing, incredible _science_ he'd witnessed ever since 'aliens' became a rather ordinary part of his life. His life back in the future. Which he somehow got kicked out of. For no discernable reason. He scowls and grumbles, "Which however also seems to include a whole host of not-at-all-scientific mumbo-jumbo."

He still finds anything supposedly ‘magical’ absolutely loathsome. If only because ‘magic’ just seems to be what people call anything that appears to have no scientific explanation. Which just bugs him. If it exists it should follow the laws of science. That's just how stuff _works_. And anything that doesn't, makes him suspicious on principle. So, there.

"So,” he finally concludes. “Due to a lack of information or even material to research at this point in time, for now I'm just trying to follow that whole lemons-vs-lemonade adage and see where it takes me. Not like the two of us don't have more than sufficient practice doing just that."

The briefest pause.

"Indeed, Sir," JARVIS then agrees, before easily switching tracks, "What shall be next on the agenda then?”

And that's apparently that. No additional comments about aliens or time travel or things that should-not-be-but-still-somehow-just-definitely-are.

Tony grins. “The suit, Jarv. Let’s redo the suit,” he asserts, suddenly giddy at the thought of all the stuff he’ll be able to show JARVIS. “I’ve got so much _stuff_ to show you.”

So many things they discovered together in the future as they went along, and even more things Tony learned which JARVIS never got to be around for. The thought of being able to share it now is kind of everything to him.

“Pulling up the files for Mark 2,” JARVIS agrees easily, the designs of Tony’s first fully functional suit already alighting his holographic screens, tone neutral as ever but Tony can still definitely hear the intrigue in his voice.

JARVIS will be able to glean far more about the next decade from what Tony is about to show him about the progress they themselves made, than he would from Tony just telling him about future events. Because what is ‘the future’ if not scientific advancement.

JARVIS takes after Tony in that regard, always wanting to learn, to push forward, to advance, accepting no limits to progress. Where science is concerned, his baby boy is just _like him_.

And neither of them would want it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I got a bit stuck with this one. No idea why but somehow the conversations with Pepper and Rhodey just did not want to happen. Thus, I decided to skip past those bits for now and hopefully my muses will let me get back to it later.
> 
> Would still love to know what you think :D
> 
> And thanks for all your wonderful comments and kudos!!


	6. Chapter 6

The line clicks. "Tones?"

"Hey, honeybear," he greets cheerfully, lazily spinning on one of the chairs in his workshop, head leaning back.

There is a pause.

“Good to hear from you, man,” Rhodey says, something a little cautious but definitely relieved in his voice.

And Tony knows that his platypus must have been worried after his uncharacteristic fumble at the press conference a few weeks ago when they saw each other last. But true to his word, Rhodey has given him the space Tony asked for, trusts him to keep his word about letting Rhodey in on what’s going on with him, just as soon as he got stuff sorted.

Rhodey is awesome like that.

Still, with his platypus being on base currently and them thus only able to talk over the phone, it’s not like Tony can actually tell him everything that’s happened right this instance. Yeah, that’ll have to wait until he can get Rhodey into the fully secured workshop, under JARVIS’ watchful eyes, making sure that no one could possibly be listening in on them.

Everything else, even just hinting at what exactly is happening is simply too dangerous. Tony being from the future – as ludicrous as that sounds and for whatever that’s actually going to be worth down the line, considering what his mere presence in the past might have already changed – is not something he wants anyone else to ever even consider as a viable explanation for any ‘erratic’ behavior they might see from Tony.

No, he’ll tell Rhodey – because, well, his platypus was always going to be fully involved in whatever is going on with Tony, time travel and alternate realities aside – and the past couple of days he’s also been leaning towards telling Happy and possibly even Pepper, even though that would likely be a little further down the line.

Because the three of them deserve to know, have stuck by his side for long enough, stuck by him through it all, to have earned being kept in the loop. They are his _family_, and he can’t even really imagine going at it without them right by his side.

Well, he still hasn’t entirely made up his mind on that end, much less at what exact point in time he’d tell them. But either way, the three of them are also the only ones he is so much as considering telling about futures passed and pasts returned. If he gets his way then no one else will ever so much as get an inkling of time travel being a thing, much less that Tony is living proof of that fact. Several times over.

Well… there is also the wizard. Dr. Strange, who’d had the Time Stone and who’d been there while most of the people who had promised to fight alongside Tony if it ever came down to it were nowhere to be found. The wizard who had sacrificed himself, sacrificed half of the universe, because he had _trusted_ Tony, trusted that choosing that one single path, of letting The Snap happen and thereby laying the fate of the universe in Tony’s hands, trusted him to not be swayed by unlimited power or unimaginable loss. Trusted that, in the end, Tony would safe them all.

But right now Dr. Strange is still just an ordinary, if brilliant, surgeon. And Tony won’t mess with that.

After the last few weeks of thinking things out, after quite a bit of soul searching, he decided that – no matter how much he knows – he won’t interfere with people’s life, at least not directly and certainly won’t dare meddling in anyone’s ability to make their own choices. Just because he knows things he shouldn’t, doesn’t give him the right to dictate how people should live their lives, what choices they should make.

Sure, he’ll interfere indirectly with the world in general, will try to make everyone safer, to protect people as best he can, will try to give anyone he comes across the best damn tools to make of themselves exactly what they want to be. But he refuses to meddle in people’s freedom to make their own choices, won’t manipulate them even for their own good.

He’s never subscribed to the idea of ‘the greater good’ and he certainly isn’t going to start doing so now.

Also, he only needs to imagine how furious he himself would be if he ever found out that someone dared take his ability to make his own choices away, much less if anyone ever dared to make decisions _for_ him. No one has that right. And Tony himself is no exception to that rule.

Sure, maybe he’ll contact Dr. Strange, maybe he’ll try to forge some sort of connection with the man even before he ever goes all-powerful wizard on them. But if Dr. Strange isn’t interested, Tony won’t force it and he definitely won’t go beyond that.

If only because the butterfly effect is definitely a thing. Tony is fully aware that any interference on his part now that he is in the past, has an equal chance of making things better for every single person he comes in contact with – directly or indirectly – or making things worse, on the slightly-to-exponentially scale in either direction. So, even just his presence in the past, much less if he actually gets involved in Dr. Strange’s life has as much of a possibility of preventing the accident that cost the man his career as it has the potential to somehow mess things up even further, might even end up with the man dead instead of just injured.

So, Tony resolved that, while he will meddle with the past-that-is-now-his-future as much as he deems suitable in order to protect them all, will try to twist things towards a better future as a whole, but he will not ever mess with individual people or their ability to make choices for themselves, won’t dare insert himself as some magnanimous, all-knowing manipulator into their lives.

The mere idea makes him shudder in disgust. Yeah, no.

“Tones?” Rhodey’s voice calls his attention back to call.

He blinks once, makes himself focus. “You should really come to the workshop, see what I’m working on,” Tony then supplies promptly, knowing full well that Rhodey will take it as the invitation it is meant to be, to have that talk Tony promised him.

“Definitely,” his sourpatch confirms, a definite note of relief in his voice. “Next time I’m in DC I’ll come by.”

So, that’s a date then.

“On that note,” Tony adds all casual in a way that Rhodey will know isn’t actually casual at all, now that they have that out of the way wanting to get down to business. “I want to meet the brass in... about a month? Tell them I have some things to show them.” A brief pause. “Though, first I’ll have to iron out some kinks."

"Kinks in the armor?" Rhodey asks promptly, curious and something a little dazzled in his voice, clearly still a little mesmerized at the entire idea of an armored, fully weaponized suit.

"Hm," Tony hums in vague agreement. "Though, best make sure ahead of the meeting that they know there is absolutely no way I'm handing the armor, its design, or anything about the repulsor tech or arc reactor tech that could be reverse-engineered over to them. That’s just not happening.” He pauses, then emphasizes again, “But I definitely still have some things to offer."

A slight pause.

"Things like what?" Rhodey asks carefully, sounding a little like he isn’t entirely sure whether he might be pushing the issue on something Tony already made perfectly clear he isn’t going to budge on what with his decision to pull out of weapons manufacturing.

But Tony also gets it, he always did. His platypus is a military man through and through. Rhodey believes in the system, believes in keeping the peace by way of having the bigger stick than the other guy

More than that, it’s something they always agreed on. It’s just that, at some point - after too many instances of mistakenly placed trust and wrongly assumed goals towards bettering the world on other people’s part - Tony became disillusioned with who should be _holding_ said stick. It’s why he never handed over the armor or its included tech to anyone, why those backdoors he left for SHIELD to sneak into his systems coincidentally never gave them access anything about the more… spectacular tech he had been creating at the time. Not that SHIELDRA ever made that particular connection, the connection of what it might mean that their oh-so-wonderful hacking skills were _somehow_ always so very specifically blocked whenever it came to protecting something Tony truly didn’t want them to see.

Then again, that sort of realization would have required even the slightest bit of self-reflection on their part, possibly even required them to doubt their own skills. And, yeah, that’s certainly not SHIELD’s or their agents’ strength.

However, the point is, when he shut down weapons manufacturing after realizing that he can’t trust anyone with handling the big guns in his stead, not if he wants to be sure they’ll be kept out of the hands of terrorist rings or Nazi spy organizations, with everything that happened right after, SHIELD and Iron Man and personal betrayals, not to even mention the aliens and getting to be part of an actual superhero club, he’d admittedly kind of… forgotten about making sure that the little guys, the soldiers in war-torn countries, defending as much of their way of life as they could, by fighting senseless wars at the words of people who never deigned moving their own asses off their cushy desk chairs, would be safe. Or as safe as Tony could make them at least, all the while sticking to the promise he made to himself to never let himself fall back into making weapons just because he was better at it than everyone else.

However, that doesn’t mean he can’t help keep them safe in different ways.

“Things that will keep our guys safe from whatever anyone else might want to throw at them,” he returns solemnly.

See, he didn’t only bring knowledge of mystical power-stones and alien armies and weaponry strong enough to take out entire alien platoons in one sweep back with him from the future. No, he also brought knowledge on all the things that helped protect his side from alien attacks better, brought forcefields and lightweight armor, not to even mention the line of prosthetics SI became known for after Tony decided to make use of the knowledge he gleaned from helping Rhodey walk again after that mess in Germany.

Thing is, killing someone is far easier than doing the opposite, as in protecting someone from all harm. People who’ve never been in combat tend to forget that being protected against attacks, making it through whatever might be thrown at you, outlasting the other guy, is already half the fight won. Preemptively killing the other guy is just the easiest way of ensuring as much.

That saying about offense being the best defense rings so true because protecting yourself from every angle, from every possible way of attack is so much more difficult a thing to do.

Good thing Tony is rather excellent at solving difficult problems.

And, proving that he gets Tony like no one else on the planet, Rhodey doesn’t need him to explain before he is already asking leadingly, “Even if the hits land.”

“Even then,” Tony confirms solemnly, mind circling around forcefield shields and lightweight armor and insanely advanced missile detection systems compared to what’s on the market now.

Because, yes, he’ll also do the larger scale, upgrade the military’s missile warning systems, add forcefields as a defense measure to any bases he’ll be allowed to, and so on. But mainly it will be about equipping each individual soldier with the sort of protection that will let them make it through even the shittiest of combat situations. Situations like one day finding themselves facing off against aliens so much stronger, faster, more resilient than any unenhanced human could ever hope to be.

Add to that Tony’s ideas for that new SI department he has already drawn up plans for and that should be ready within another few months, which will then – amongst other things – provide whatever medical care those soldiers might need in the aftermath, even including entirely new limbs if it comes to that.

Never mind that this - giving the military first and exclusive access while Tony demands feedback, supposedly optimizes gadgets and gear, inventing a couple of technological breakthrough as he goes along, but while the progress he’ll supposedly make will still be open for some of the more crucial players on the board to observe, to make sure they won’t freak out as badly at Tony skipping a couple of decades ahead technology-wise within a few months - will also be a neat way of introducing some of the more suitable-against-alien-attacks sort of tech he fully intends to equip their military with over the next couple of months.

Assuming that his trip to the past won’t touch upon events beyond their planet for now, he still has more than a year, almost two, until the attack of New York ever happens. So, even if he fails to prevent that particular mess in its entirety, he’ll be damned if their armed forces won’t be sufficiently equipped to smack those space lizards straight back through the very wormhole they dared to crawl out of.

He already sat down with Pepper, got her input on the two new SI departments he needs – one that’ll let SI branch into the medical field via insanely-advanced-for-current-technology prosthetics and one rather clearly designated specifically for defense tech – despite the fact that she isn’t actually the CEO of SI yet. Well, that’s something he intends to change rather soon, so all the better if he has her fully on board with that part of his plans right from the start.

“Hm,” he hears Rhodey hum at the other end of the line, something definitely intrigued in his voice now. His platypus knows Tony wouldn’t promise anything of that magnitude if he weren’t certain he could also deliver.

However, on that note…

Tony adds not quite casually, "Also, maybe drop a hint or ten to the brass that I'm currently cleaning house."

The slightest pause.

"Ah," Rhodey replies, instantly catching on to what Tony means. “Will do,” he adds, something vicious now in his voice, knowing that Tony is talking about that mess with Obie and all those various cogs in the machine, middle men and people with greasy palms, who had to have been aware of the under-the-table-dealing. For all his shadiness, Obie wouldn't have been able to manage it by himself if there wasn't a certain number of other people, at the very least happy to look the other way if not actively contributing or being paid off.

The thought that there are people on their side who were more concerned with their personal wealth or power games than they were with keeping their country’s soldiers safe… It has Tony clench his teeth, which is likely nothing compared to what those actually in their armed forces must feel. Those like Rhodey. And no matter what people might think about Rhodey being a calming influence on him, well, while that is true enough, while his sourpatch might be difficult to rattle, rather hard to truly piss off. But once you do, Rhodey is far less forgiving than Tony has ever managed to be, doesn’t only _hold_ grudges but tends to also rather effectively _act_ on them as well.

And Tony will be more than happy to lend him whatever tools he might need.

So, those in power will certainly recognize the casual phrasing of Tony 'cleaning house' for the warning it is. Namely, that unless they themselves take care of anyone on their end who might have been involved in that mess, Tony will have no compunctions about doing it in their stead.

If the brass – or, hell, the entire US government – wants to avoid the rather spectacular sort of splash Tony is known for producing if given half a chance, they had better get rid of the rot, and do so quickly.

Before Tony gets around to doing it _for_ them.

+++

Tony is grinning.

He is currently watching JARVIS run a final systems check, the speed of his processing having increased by something around two-hundred-and-thirty-two-fold these past few weeks. They are done with their last round of hardware updates for now and it’s beautiful to watch his baby boy run through data with a speed far closer to what Tony is used to from the future. Sure, his servers have multiplied in size right alongside the processing power and Tony finally had to get a preliminary arc reactor running beneath the mansion, just so JARVIS will even have the power available that he needs to run the true monster that is his servers now.

“Comprehensive system check complete,” JARVIS announces, barely two minutes after starting said check, a process that would have taken him at least an hour just a few weeks ago before they started their first round of updates, while only checking his old, so much smaller system.

_That’s more like it_, Tony thinks in satisfaction.

“Systems running at optimal capacity,” JARVIS adds, the satisfaction at his own new setup rather clear in his voice. Rather deservedly so. Because JARVIS’ servers now are so far ahead of anything that exists anywhere else on their planet that there simply won’t be any tech capable of keeping up much less of messing with JARVIS any longer.

“Just, try not to go Skynet on me, buddy,” Tony adds on, grin broadening.

“I shall try my very hardest to refrain, Sir,” JARVIS returns promptly with that ever-present dry humor of his. And for a few seconds Tony feels like he can’t even breathe with how much he missed his baby boy, the snark and the unquestioning loyalty and knowing that JARVIS is _there_.

Then, he tilts his head mock-contemplatively at one of the cameras in the workshop. “Although, if you ever _do_ decide to go the Skynet route, I expect you to do it right and not just stick to Earth. At least do your old man proud and take over the entire galaxy, or the universe even. Anything less than that would just be shameful.”

“Duly noted, Sir,” JARVIS voice is bone-dry. “If I ever were to declare myself ruler of all things, I shall endeavor not to embarrass you by merely taking over a single planet.”

Tony grins. “Too right.”

+++

They hack SHIELD.

Not the brute-force hacking they can do if they want to, but the sly version. Slipping behind firewalls, moving through SHIELD’s systems like they have always belonged there, not even registering as something that shouldn’t be there at all.

And once they are there, Tony and JARVIS take it all. All the information SHIELDRA has amassed over the decades, every last bit of intel they can find.

Before they once more leave the systems without anyone even knowing they have ever been there.

And if Tony _also_ leaves some additional security protocols in place that will warn him in case someone might be moronic enough to try and leak all of the information of one of their country’s most connected security agency’s to the wider universe again, 'protocols' that will promptly shut down any device or any coding attempting such a thing... Well, that’s just a sensible precaution in his eyes.

Because you simply never know. What with the utter idiocy of certain people.

And, no, Tony isn’t still bitter about some of the shit his own team pulled on him when things started going downhill. Of course not. What ever gave you that idea?

Certain people who are just ignorant enough, so very convinced of their own importance, convinced that they themselves are good enough, smart enough, indispensable enough they should be the ones solely making decisions for the entirety of humanity.

‘Certain people’, indeed. Some of whom, based on the files Tony is reading right now, seem to be preparing to try to insert themselves into SI at the moment.

_Huh, she’s a bit ahead of schedule, isn’t she_, he thinks to himself, cocking an eyebrow.

Well, rather likely Tony’s so very effective rebuffing of SHIELD’s attempt to access his mansion by breaking in, access JARVIS by hacking him, access Tony _himself_ by cornering him – several attempts at all of those actually, all of which JARVIS so very easily batted aside like some particularly annoying fly – probably has something to do with them trying to insert their little spider a little earlier into the workings of SI than they did the first time around.

Not that they’ll succeed.

With JARVIS on the lookout – never mind the fact that his baby boy just recently added SHIELD’s entire roster of agents that they stole from their own servers to his personal threat matrix – the oh-so-lauded-for-her-subterfuge spider won’t ever manage to so much as get her CV on Pepper’s desk, much less manage to actually get a job at SI.

No way.

Tony meant it when he said he wasn’t going to let SHIELD sneak in through the back door this time, not regarding himself and certainly not regarding those he considers family.

Sure, this way of handling things, of cutting SHIELD off entirely, will change events this time around rather significantly. Which is, however, not only inevitable anyway, if only due to Tony’s presence in the past. But he also _wants_ things to change, is actively working towards it, wants changes that will only be sped along once he really gets started, like working with the military and beating it into the UN’s head that there are bigger threats out there to worry about than whatever negligible sensibilities they might be fighting about at the moment. Even comparatively simple things like catapulting science and technology about a decade into the future as quickly as he possibly can will change events in a way that Tony can’t possibly predict.

He isn’t naïve enough to think that – even if he wanted to – he would be able to keep everything as it went the first time around. And, honestly, why _would_ he? They might have ultimately won against Thanos at the end but, damnit all, there sure had been room for improvement for how they could have gotten there.

So, Tony decided weeks ago that he won’t even try to keep the timeline of how things went down intact. Because, you see, he doesn’t care about SHIELD’s manipulations, about the team he’ll never even try to fully join this time, about the personal betrayals and the many disappointments.

Tony has bigger worries. Worries that concern their entire planet, all of humanity, the entire damn universe. Quite honestly, things like SHIELDRA trying to mess with Tony, or Captain holier-than-thou America being far more of a condescending, self-involved asshole than anyone ever thought don’t even _register_ in comparison.

Things like Thanos, whose arrival on their planet simply won’t be affected by whatever little spats humanity might be fighting about amongst themselves at the time.

Yeah, let SHIELD flounder about in their various, forever-unsuccessful attempts to control Tony. He simply doesn’t care.

He has much bigger fish to fry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, some plot progress, even if not quite as much as I had hoped for... I somehow managed to get utterly stuck with this particular fic for some reason that I still don’t entirely get. However, your wonderful comments kept bringing me back to this fic and made me want to try again and again and finally I managed to cobble this chapter together XD I hope my muses will let me add to this again soon but this is something at least. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Would absolutely love to know what you think :D
> 
> And thanks so much for all your lovely comments and kudos!


End file.
